I hurry over to where Jamie, Zee and Grace are sitting at our usual spot near the Night Owl’s stage.

“Oh my god, finally!” Jamie exclaims, jumping up and pulling me into a tight hug. “We were getting worried. What with your fainting habit and all. Your coffee’s probably cold by now, and Zee ate half your cranberry muffin.”

I give Zee and Grace a quick hug before flopping down into a faded burgundy velvet armchair.

“Sorry,” I say, taking a sip of my lukewarm but still delicious coffee. I steal a quick glance back behind me. Mrs. Leyton and her spidery suitor have left. Thank god. “I got sort of… caught up in something.”

“Oooh, do tell!” Jamie says, her eyes widening. “It doesn’t have anything to do with five super hot boys you’re mingling with, does it?”

I hesitate for a moment, unsure of how to respond. My besties know that I’m spending all my time with Fable right now, working on a project – that part was impossible to keep a secret, seeing as Zee was with me when I walked into my kitchen to find Felix and Alastaire washing dishes. Not to mention the time that Felix showed up in my living room during the “where is Ashling” debacle and sent Jamie and (almost) Zee into a screaming fit.

But I’ve been careful not to tell them anything more than what they’ve seen for themselves. They don’t know that I’m working on an album, they don’t know the boys are staying in a cabin in the forest, and they certainly don’t know anything about the puzzling experiences I’ve had since becoming entangled with the band.

“Jamie, you know she can’t talk about the F-word,” Zee says, the last part a whisper.

“You don’t need to tell us anything you don’t want to Ashling,” Grace says, pushing a mousy blonde shoulder length ringlet back behind her ear. “We understand that. All of us understand that.” She looks pointedly at Jamie.

“Did they make you sign a non-disclosure agreement?” Jamie asks me, ignoring Grace.

“Well… no…” I answer uneasily.

“Then there’s absolutely no reason for you not to tell your BFFs every last detail,” Jamie says. “So, are you actually staying a house or a hotel with them or something? Where have you been all this time? What’s the top secret thing you’re working on? When can we meet them? Has anything happened?”

“Happened?” I repeat.

“Well, yeah,” Jamie says. “You’re not exactly bad looking. And you’re spending time with the self-proclaimed ‘harem king’ and his equally hot friends. Who do you like the most?”

I don’t know what to say. There’s no way I’m going to tell my friends anything personal about Fable. Not only out of respect for the band’s privacy – but also to protect them. I don’t want to get my friends mixed up in something that could be dangerous.

“I don’t like any of them like that,” I say. At least, I don’t think I do.

“What’s Ben like in real life?” Zee asks suddenly, a hint of pleading in her voice. When she first got into Fable, she had the hugest crush on Lyall, but switched to Ben a few months ago. She has a poster of him in her locker, and I saw one time when I slept over at her house that she’d written I <3 BEN CASSIDY on all her pairs of panties. She’s in seriously deep.

I wish I could tell her how awesome he is in person. How he cracks the lamest jokes that are so bad they’re funny, how he ate a whole pizza with chopsticks the one time because Alastaire was making fun of his Japanese heritage. How he’s a total undercover anime freak, and he told me that he cried during the sad bits in Inuyasha and Attack on Titan, but his manager told him to keep that side of himself secret, because it doesn’t suit his ‘fireball badass’ public image.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I wish I could share all of the amazing things I’ve learned about our idols with these girls who mean so much to me. But I just can’t.

So I shake my head, and mutter an apology.

“That’s ok,” Zee says, but she sounds disappointed.

There’s a moment of silence, and without thinking, I blurt out “Zee, you said one time that you believe in ghosts. Do you still believe in that stuff?”

“Yeah, of course,” Zee says, her mood instantly picking up. “My yiayia told me some totally insane stuff that happened to her when she was growing up in Greece. Yiayia doesn’t lie.”

“Yeah, but yiayia is more than eighty years old,” Jamie says. “And yiayia believes in angels and devils and men with the bodies of goats.”

“So do I,” Zee says defiantly.

“Sorry, I’m with Jamie on this one,” Grace says quietly. “Belief in the supernatural is just plain illogical. No offence to you or your grandmother Zee, but I just can’t get behind anything that doesn’t hold up under scientific scrutiny.”

“But you go to church,” Zee says.

“Because my mom would probably disown me if I didn’t,” Grace says. She sits up a little straighter as she mentions her mom, her dark brown eyes narrowing with some unpleasant memory. She’s dressed conservatively and modesty as usual – a cream A-line dress with a pale blue cashmere cardigan, a small tasteful necklace, dainty pearl earrings. All to please her mother, I’m sure, who runs etiquette classes in her spare time and treats Grace like her own personal porcelain doll. I wouldn’t swap moms with her for all the money in the world. Mrs. Beaumont’s a monster. She won’t even let Grace have a cellphone.

“Why are you asking about this stuff anyway?” Jamie says, watching me curiously.

“No reason,” I lie. “It’s stupid. Forget I asked about it.”

“If you’re having trouble with something from the other side, my church can help,” Zee says solemnly. “Seriously, exorcisms are nothing for a Greek Orthodox priest. I heard that one time a girl in our con-”

“Less haunting talk, more catching up! What have you all been up to?” I ask no one in particular, trying to steer in the conversation away from the supernatural as quickly as possible.

This is meant to be my time out from the creepy stuff. Why on earth did I bring up ghosts?

As I knew she would, Jamie launches into a long description of the vlogger shoot she did in LA for Nasty Gal last week. She only stops speaking when Jade walks up to our table, leaning down to pick up some empty owl-shaped coffee mugs.

“Hi Jade,” Jamie says, quickly hiking up her skirt an inch and fluttering her eyelashes. I can see what it is about him that has her hooked. He’s looking more male-model delicious than ever today – dark blonde hair tied up behind his head, wearing dark jeans and a light grey tank top streaked with splatters of midnight blue and silver paint.

“Hey,” he says, before turning to me. “Ashling, your friend hasn’t called me yet. I gave her my number on the back of the receipt. Didn’t she see it?”

Kitty slipped the folded up receipt into her bag yesterday, I’m sure of it. She must have seen his message.

“I think she’s just… busy,” I say.

“Well, I’m not letting her get away,” Jade says. “I’ve never- uh… I just really need to see her again. Can’t you give me her number or something?”

I don’t need to turn around to see the look of shock on Jamie’s face. I can feel it. She’s liked Jade for more than a year now, and any hint of competition sends her on a one-way trip to crayville. Tears, playing Adele for days on end, drinking box wine from her mom’s bar fridge until she passes out. All the normal breakup behavior without the breakup, because the whole thing is totally one sided.

I sneak a quick peek at her and I can already see her normally tan face has gone slightly pale, her cheeks are turning pink enough to match her hair, and she looks like she’s holding back tears.

Lame. I’m going to be doing some serious damage control later.

“Kitty definitely has your number,” I tell him, noticing how Jade’s grey eyes seem to sparkle at the mention of her name. “I’ll tell her to call you.”

“Promise?” he says.

“I swear,” I say.

“Thanks a mil Ashling,” he says, giving my friends a quick wave as he walks back to his spot at the coffee station.

As he walks away, I reach out and grab Jamie’s hand. She’s biting her bottom lip, which is wobbling dangerously.

“I guess we should move this to my house,” I say, hoping we can get Jamie out of the Night Owl before she bursts into tears. She likes him so much that a part of me really does wish he liked her back. But even if he did, a sixteen-year-old going out with a twenty-one-year-old isn’t exactly looked kindly upon. Jamie’s unrequited love has been doomed from the start.

Zee, Grace and I walk out of the Night Owl, each with an arm around Jamie. We head to my house, but not before buying a jumbo-sized box of caramel doughnuts from Café au Clair de Lune.

Let the Netflix binge commence.